Updated 10:01 pm, Saturday, November 16, 2013

BRIDGEPORT -- You see the blueprint, the model for success, thriving just down the road in Philadelphia and you think to yourself, "Why not? We could do that here." So you make phone calls, tons of them, and discuss your idea with your constituency. You point out the positives, drum up the potential that the idea could hold and, eventually, you get everyone on board.

And just like that, the Connecticut 6 was born.

Five years in, it looks like the event that first grew into fruition in Fairfield athletic director Gene Doris' mind is here to stay. Over 5,000 came to the Webster Bank Arena to see Quinnipiac get past Hartford 82-77 in the opener, watch Yale rally to beat Central Connecticut 93-77 in the middle game, and roar when Fairfield bested Sacred Heart 67-54 in the nightcap.

"It was tremendous," said SHU's Anthony Latina, who made his head coaching debut for the Pioneers against the Stags, taking the reins from Dave Bike, who retired after 35 seasons.

"I told our guys we have a great opportunity to play in front of a lot of people. (Sacred Heart) had a great turnout, the students came out like I'd never seen since I've been here. I've never seen a student turnover like that. That was tremendous."

"It was fantastic," added Fairfield coach Sydney Johnson. "I have to tip my hat to the students. They were phenomenal and Sacred Heart brought their contingent, but it wasn't louder or better than ours. To see all those white shirts up there and know it was our student body, I was really fired up about that."

It's great that the six state schools other than UConn get together for this one-night tripleheader, but maybe it's time to really start working to bring together a Philadelphia Big 5 mentality to Connecticut by making sure the six schools all schedule each other every season.

This season, Hartford has all five state teams on its schedule. They played Fairfield on Wednesday and will go against Yale, Central and SHU. The Pioneers also have Yale, Central and Hartford on their schedule, while Fairfield will still face Quinnipiac. Yale has Sacred Heart and Hartford on its schedule, and Central has Hartford and SHU.

And now, maybe it's just me, but I'd much rather see Sacred Heart play Quinnipiac than play Radford or Lafayette. Do you really think more people are interested in watching Fairfield face Northeastern or Bucknell over Yale or Central Connecticut? Doubt it. And Yale, get the Bobcats and the Stags on the dance card and get rid of Bryant and Baruch -- I mean, really, Baruch?

"I think it can be like the Big Five," Doris said. "I don't think we were in position with that before. I think it was always a thought in the back of our heads that it could work. I think if you take a look now even like with us, we're playing Hartford this year as part of the Hall of Fame tournament. We're playing Quinnipiac in the league, so that's three games right there, and there's just two other games to schedule to make it work. I think everybody, if they looked at their schedules, would see pretty much the same thing as us. We all have the same ability to do this."

The most important thing scheduling the other state teams would do is lock down home games. And, as any mid-major athletic director knows, trying to get home games is like trying to harpoon Moby Dick.

"This way you would be assured that you would have two home and three away, or three home, two away every year ... or two and two and one neutral," Doris said. "That's pretty good when you take a look and see how many people go on the road for four or five games a lot of times just because they can't get a home game."

And if these games continue to play out the way they did last weekend -- Hartford led by 11 at halftime, only to fall behind by 13 before cutting it down to 1 in the final minute; Yale trailed by 17 with 14 minutes left before winning by 16; and Fairfield and SHU went toe-to-toe for 40 minutes -- the natural rivalries will grow like wildfire.

"I think if you get the regional rivalries going, it'll bring more people out to see the games," Quinnipiac head coach Tom Moore said. "That's good. I think the state of Connecticut is passionate enough about college basketball that enough people have some interest in it, and I think traditions like this sort of take hold."

And exposure means interest. And vice versa.

"I am 1,000 percent sure that this will become an institution," the Stags' Johnson said. "This is good for our recruiting and our profiles. If there was any one school that it didn't make sense for, maybe they would be wiggling out of it, but it makes sense for everybody and that's how the Big Five started."